


Hunted

by sirenalley



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/M, Implied Past Lavellan/Solas, Minor Character(s), Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-05
Updated: 2017-01-05
Packaged: 2018-09-09 15:50:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,662
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8898010
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sirenalley/pseuds/sirenalley
Summary: "The hunted make no demands. I could have you any way I like. I could turn you over here and bend you in half, take you that way in the dirt as I choose. You have no leverage here, girl. This is the wilderness of the Avvar at the edge of the world, and you are only our privileged guest."





	

**Author's Note:**

> Considering how many times I've played the Jaws of Hakkon, I'm hoping I haven't butchered my Avvar/Frostback Basin knowledge, but if I messed up anything glaringly obvious, please let me know. Anyway, I can't be the only one who thought the Inquisitor butting heads with a certain NPC wasn't a little bit hot (or... maybe I am).

After the battle has ended, and Hakkon Wintersbreath has been slain by the Inquisitor’s blade and staff, they formally return to Stone-Bear Hold. The sun is low and cool in the sky, and although evening sets in, it isn’t the eternal darkness of a savage spirit-possessed creature of Avvar godhood. Svarah “Sun-Hair” greets their return with a feast and display of entertainment from fighters, climbers, and merchants alike. Shadows play off the cliffs bracketing the hold, laughter is buoyant, and crowds gather along stone pathways.

Lavellan shivers with a foreign chill. Wintersbreath is a corpse on the melting icebed of their battleground, yet she can’t loosen the grasp of cold. With her Avvar-furred coat around her shoulders, she strives for diplomatic distance from the celebration. 

This deep into the Frostback Basin, temperatures aren’t forgiving. She’d prefer Emprise du Lion at times. She likes snow and ice and frozen lakes. She likes the architectural ruins of the Emerald Forest where evidence of her people is rich. There is nothing here but bare stone between uncharted sea and jungle.

Sun-Hair appears at her side with a conservative smirk. “You do not appear to revel in your victory, First-Thaw, but I suppose I should not blame you. One felled god is like another to you.”

The title sits strangely on her shoulders. Another one to bear, though not quite carrying the same weight as Inquisitor.

“I didn’t think of it like that. Corypheus and Wintersbreath were both different beasts.”

“Different gods,” Sun-Hair agrees. “And different ages. Perhaps one day the Lord of War and Winter will find a more appropriate vessel as well as honorable cause.”

“A while from now, I hope.”

“Yes.” It may be a trick of light, but Lavellan sees the fire in the Thane’s hair from the reflection of torches mounted around them. “Do you not feel any pride from this defeat? You have saved the lowlanders as your first Inquisitor once wished. A noble success. You have the entire night to celebrate.”

“Perhaps.” Lavellan can’t help but like this woman. There is an affinity between them in their mirrored roles. It begs certain honesty. “I mentioned our goal was the recovery of Inquisitor Ameridan’s body. And it was successful, yet… everything I have learned in the process has been unsettling. I can’t help dwelling on it. It is harder to move on than I expected.”

“That is no great surprise. Tomorrow you will wake and the world will not be as you saw it yesterday. Each day changes. You cannot force the mind to follow, but you must remain vigilant to each change. Fail this, and you may not recognize the world in which you find yourself.”

“Wise words.” Now Lavellan is smiling, her lips tight at the corners. It often feels as though Sun-Hair is imparting wisdom upon her as a mentor might counsel an adolescent. “I can see why you are the hold’s Thane.”

“And I can see why you are their Lady Inquisitor,” Sun-Hair says. “You will always be welcome here as guests of the hold. Drink.” 

This time she accepts the ale offered out. Once Sun-Hair has gone, Lavellan spends time sipping on the rim of a mug. She isn’t approached again. 

_Tomorrow you will wake and the world will not be as you saw it yesterday._

That has already happened. The Inquisition founded itself on ancient dogma she hardly understood. And she is expected at the helm. While not visible, the scars of that burden rival even the one on her hand. 

There was once someone who relieved her mind, among all of those sworn to serve at her side. That privilege of kinships seems distant now. She wonders if soon she will forget the color of his eyes. They were so dark, and appeared to gaze through her at a point far distant. They did not truly see her at all.

 

The Master of the Hunt is apart from the festivities, seated on a long wooden bench outside of his hut with a blade across his thigh. He looks up at Lavellan’s approach. Even this far south in the chill of encroaching night he wears little. As little as when Lavellan first met him—a man of smooth skin outlining hard muscle. Fur cloaks his shoulders, but his torso remains mostly bare and stark in the firelight. It does not surprise her the southerners are not sun-browned. The Frostback Basin lends more readily to cloaks and boots. 

She can’t guess his age. Older than herself, no doubt, but not elderly. Unlike the others of his hold, he isn’t drinking. 

They had left on a strange, uncertain note when they met. Bravery isn’t what guides her forward, but something can be said of what she has become.

“You cut down one of our gods,” he speaks first. “Inquisitor First-Thaw. There’s respect in that title.”

“I hope to honor it.”

“We’ll see,” the Huntsman says gruffly. “So you’ve proven your worthiness in a fight. It would have been a worthy show to watch. I saw Hakkon in the sky after it went dark. That howling was enough to scare the youngest in the hold. Everyone thought the world was ending, and Hakkon would be the last nightmare we saw before it all vanished.”

“Hakkon was an admirable opponent,” she says. The voice of that spirit rang in her head for some time after, echoing in the chambers of her mind. Corypheus had been the same. Too many dead, black shadows promising great pain. 

“You’ve taken your title here. But don’t think I’ve changed my mind. Hunting is not the same.”

“Yes, and as you’ve told me you’re the finest hunter of the hold.” She can’t help a bladed edge to her tongue. The warm ale may be testament of it. “Have you slaughtered and skinned any Avvar gods I should be made aware?”

“I don’t hunt gods, Inquisitor,” he laughs. “I hunt animals.”

“Is a dragon not an animal?”

“Hakkon is no animal. The dragon was a vessel for Hakkon Wintersbreath, Korth’s firstborn son, Lord of War and Winter,” he says. “You wish to challenge me, First-Thaw? I’d take it into consideration, but only as an honorary guest.”

“How flattering.” Adrenaline surges instantaneously through her body. It is something she often feels before battle. Dreaded at first, easier now. “What would this challenge entail exactly?”

“Hunting, of course.”

She watches the Master of the Hunt in the limited light, how he grins with his entire mouth, wide across his teeth. It’s a remarkably handsome smirk, fierce and proud. For a moment she questions herself. She has fought demons, and archdemons, and dragons, and darkspawn. There is nothing to fear from one man. Still her heart flutters like a moth seconds from a boot overhead. She recognizes there is danger here, although she does not fear for her life. She’s not sure what is threatened, but she has felt this way before.

_Haven around her, the freshly fallen snow and gleam of white mountains in the distance—the slender frame of a man, back turned, narrow shoulders—whispers, low and far away—_

_Wake up._

The reverie doesn’t last. Lavellan squares her shoulders and stands taller. She will never match the Huntsman in height, but she has never needed that advantage. 

“Very well, then I shall challenge you.”

 

Lavellan follows the Huntsman past the torches, past the thatched-roof huts, past the tallest cliffs and the narrow opening between. The hold is not close to the jungle, but it is close to Swamp Kuldsdotten, providing enough cover and darkness for their game. Eventually they reach an upward slope. The only illumination she has is the blue firepoles—an eerie reflection on fog—but that’s all she needs. Her eyes are watchful in the shadow. 

The Huntsman steps past an entrance marked by rope and faces her with both arms crossed. His expression is impossible to discern from this distance.

“This is where we hunt,” he tells her, voice methodical.

“And what exactly are we hunting?”

Again, his smirk is luminous and handsome. “I thought that was clear. We’re as animal as the creatures around us. There are no Avvar gods to battle in this place. We spend enough time chasing down bogfishers, gurguts, and tuskets. Sometimes those of my hold even chase each other. Don’t you know what that’s like? You Dalish elves do the same.”

Lavellan’s mind leaps to the conversation with Ameridan, the truth behind the fall of the Dales and the callous treatment of the rest of the world. It’s a dangerous line of thinking here.

She turns her head. She feels watched, although there seems to be no one around except the Huntsman, and he remains standing directly in front of her. 

“We can stop, if you revoke your challenge,” he goads. “I can go back to the hold, and get piss-drunk, and we can pretend we were never here.”

“Why would we do that?”

The Master of the Hunt seems freer with his words, now removed from the surroundings of his fellow Avvar, perhaps more at home here than there. “Don’t want to offend our honorary guest. I’m not in the spirit of turning the whole of the Inquisition against the hold. I’m only looking for a worthy adversary.”

“I never said I wouldn’t hunt,” Lavallen says. Her muscles begin to tense, one by one, in a preparation of defense. “Are there any rules?”

“Just a few. No killing. No magic. No weapons. The game is all in the honest chase. I’ll go off first, give you some minutes to hide yourself. If you want to hide, and I suggest you should. Then we’ll start. See who catches who. The first one down is the loser.”

“Those seem a little loose to be called rules,” she says. “First one down? Do they need to be restrained? Incapacitated?”

“Whichever works. I’m not an easy man to incapacitate, First-Thaw.” 

“I can’t imagine you are. What are the stakes?”

“Don’t need any. The winning’s enough.”

Lavellan considers this. Though in truth, there isn’t much to consider. The game is established. She nods her head in simple agreement.

 

Then it begins.

Lavellan runs at a thundering sprint. Her heels strike the ground in pattern with each lurch of momentum and movement as the luminescent swamp unfurls around her. The glow of deep mushrooms blur in her peripheral; her eyes settle on nothing beyond the dim path ahead.

The Huntsman is nowhere to be seen. Her vision is shrouded as she swings her head, grasping at the futility of sight. Then, gradually, she calms. Her other senses begin to return to her: an audible hum of insects and other animals, a sharp scent of moisture, cool humidity dampening the back of her neck and her cheeks. The instincts of the wild take her in their grasp.

Perhaps she cannot see him, but she will be able to hear him, smell him, feel him. The restriction of sight will not deter a hunter. She’s reminded of her youth, although even the thickest forests in the Dales cannot compare to the enveloping seclusion of this place. 

She trusts her Dalish instincts, but she also knows the Stone-Bear hunter will be a formidable opponent. This is his territory. Stealth and surprise are the primary focus, her most useful weapons. She will need to rely on both. 

Lavellan comes upon a bogfisher and stops, watching it. The bogfisher looks back with its milky, opaque eyes and fanged snout, leathery skin gleaming in the reflection of light. It sniffs, then waddles away from her and disappears.

She walks for an indistinct period of time. She recognizes vague landmarks from when she had followed the path along the river to find Ameridan. Nothing is familiar enough to navigate based on sight alone. She falls to stealth, moving on silent feet.

After a while, sounds and scents of the wilderness come to her with clarity. She can hear the hum of insects and rustling of smaller animals, none dangerous. She smells wetness and rot, as well as pungent fungi and flowers, air thick with moisture. 

A dark shape moves in the corner of her eye. Lavellan turns sharply, suspecting another bogfisher, but this animal appears different. It has pointed ears, a narrow snout, fur instead of hide. An animal she has seen in the forest countless times. An animal that has no place here.

The wolf stops when she moves toward it and then it leaps away. She stands frozen, unable to follow.

Lavellan can feel him before she sees him. In one heartbeat the Master of the Hunt appears, his solid body a pillar of contention knocking her to the ground. There they struggle in the damp earth. His weight is a heavy burden across her chest, his legs pinning hers, his arms trapping her to the ground. Above her face his head looms. It’s exhilarating to be caught. She cannot get an inch of traction. Her advantage is speed and stealth; his advantage is the weight of muscles and knowledge of terrain. Perhaps even from the beginning she had not stood a chance.

Yet she never yields the fight, and in the back of her mind she knows—were this real rather than game, she would win. She could blast him away with a single crackling spell.

They say nothing, not even when he twists a hand into the pale drape of her hair and jerks her chin upward, slamming mouth against mouth. The kiss is nearly violent. She can feel his teeth scoring her lips. She can taste his humid breath. She can taste his tongue as it slides in, prying her jaw open. Lust throbs all the way through her body, down between her legs, aching in her cunt. Only when she can no longer breathe does he separate and lean back, knees planted in the dirt as he looks down and views the sight of her: disheveled, wet mouth, hazy eyes. And then he laughs.

“You don’t look angry to be caught,” he says. “Rather, you’re giving me an expression like you’d prefer I hadn’t stopped. If you want, I’ll let you get back up and try again. Then I’ll throw you down, and we can start from the beginning.”

“What would be the point of that?” she hisses in the dark. It’s as though an animal has come alive inside of her. “Find a decent bed for us. That is my demand.” Her face is hot, chest rising with every deep suck of air. She glares defiantly upward.

“The hunted make no demands. I could have you any way I like. I could turn you over here and bend you in half, take you that way in the dirt for as long as I choose. You have no leverage here, girl. This is the wilderness of the Avvar at the edge of the world, and _you_ are only our privileged guest. Imagine what they would think to see their Inquisitor on her knees begging for it.”

He’s taking pleasure in his control, perhaps unaware it only exists because she has given it to him.

And yet she likes to meet that fantasy, as she does now. She twists her body, hands lashing up to claw at his bare chest and pry free from his clutch. The Huntsman makes a noise in his throat and catches both arms, slamming them down. She feels the cool earth beneath her skin. His knees are a bruising pressure over her hips.

“Enough talk,” she spits. “If you won’t do it, I can find another who will.”

“That you can.” Abruptly, the Huntsman removes his weight from her. Lavellan inhales for what seems the first time in several minutes. “Let us go back.”

His hand lands on her shoulder and pulls her along as one might drag a disobedient child. Her legs feel loose and willowy. After a half-stumble, she straightens and moves properly at his side, wiping herself clean. Her heart is frantic in her chest, and the place between her legs is wet and slippery when she walks. 

Nearly a lifetime later, they return to the hold. His conjecture proves mostly true. There are little left celebrating in the late dark, those still awake unsteady on their feet. No one gives them a second glance. 

The Huntsman’s home is at some distance from the center of the hold on the cliffside, sitting at the edge close to the tournament ring. She follows him the entire way, and the entire way his hand sits firm on her shoulder. Not that she would run. 

Inside a low fire burns to dull ashes, casting shadows on the circular walls. Furs are draped over furniture, leathers in a neat pile, tools spread across a table. The hut is warm enough to chase away the swamp’s chill. In the corner is a bed, narrow but covered in blankets, and this is where he pushes her. 

“When was the last time you had a woman in your bed? Out of curiosity,” she says, beginning to peel off the armor of her clothes. Her fingertips work individually on each leather buckle. Every movement is deliberate—a calculative tug of leather threads, a yank of cloth to reveal one shoulder. “You seem eager. I would imagine a hunter of your standing would have any pick of the hold.”

“Then you know little of the Avvar.” He watches Lavellan with no hint of modesty. “Women are not a prize or trophy to claim after a bountiful hunting season. I won’t argue my own place in the hold. I am respected, but not revered as one might revere a god. You’ve met our Thane. A powerful woman, stronger even than I.”

“Yet you throw me around like a doll to do with as you please,” she says, knife-sharp. 

“Because you’ve lost our game, First-Thaw.” His hands spread slightly apart. “My respect for you remains intact.”

By now, Lavellan has stripped herself of the upper portion of her clothes. She stands bare-breasted in the glow of firelight, unabashed at the display. “Pardon me,” she says impishly. “Your ways are rather strange.”

The Huntsman approaches her, covering the distance in no more than a few steps. Half undressed as she is, Lavellan once more feels the discrepancies of their size. He has several inches on her and as many stones, broad shoulders an intimidating sight to any woman—herself excluded. She is not threatened. She wields greater power than her frame suggests, far beyond this man’s dreams or expectations.

But that is not who she is here. Here, she is just a woman, prey caught in the jaws of a beast.

The Huntsman shoves her down onto the soft-furred bed, climbing after her, held up by the strength of his arms. They kiss again, tongues sliding in union past open mouths, a slick conquest of heat and breath. She keeps her eyes open to watch his face in the dark, both hands rising to cup the back of his head. Her fingers drag across the shape of his skull reverently. 

One of the Huntsman’s hands covers her breast, taking the soft flesh in a single palmful. She gasps. It feels as though even her breasts ache to be touched. Her whole body is lonely, hollow, and he is cracking her open to an exposed depth. 

She’s wet again, although she isn’t sure if she’s been anything but wet since he threw her to the ground. The Huntsman keeps her legs pinned together with his knees and so she writhes in a desperate fit. The kiss lengthens, his tongue lashing across her teeth. 

Until, finally, it ends. Lavellan gasps for air, head foggy as she reels from the kiss.

He continues towering over her, both hands planted on the bed before he slides off. His knees touch the ground. In one movement, the Huntsman yanks the remainder of her clothes to her ankles; she still wears her boots, which ultimately restricts any movement. She can’t open her legs beyond the barest width.

“Let me,” she says, squirming, “I—”

“This is _my_ victory, girl.”

“You are the worst man I have ever met,” Lavellan manages to get out. It only makes him laugh. 

“I doubt that.” He leans down and licks the slit between her legs, tongue painting a broad, hot stripe that has her back bending on the bed. She calls out. Her hands reach down, but the Huntsman swats them away. “You’re feistier than you first looked. I misjudged you. Should’ve known by that spine you first showed.”

“Put your mouth to better use or I’ll do it for you.”

“You don’t have the leverage,” he mocks. “Follow the rules, or forfeit completely.”

She goes quiet. And so he laps at her again, and again, over and over until she’s wetter than before, a liquid heat that flares up into her belly. She can hardly control herself. Her pleasure is tethered to something inexplicable and unreachable. Although she wants more, she does not allow herself to beg. She’ll take this punishment instead. The silence is better, more manageable.

He pushes her knees to her chest and continues to lick, parting the lips of her pussy and grazing the sensitive clit. She jerks at that. Every nerve is wired to the Huntsman’s mouth with animal craving. That cruel tongue flicks across her clit with precision; Lavellan can hear herself panting in quiet, soft noises. Electric waves of pleasure radiate up through her belly.

After what feels like an age, he raises his head and wipes his mouth clean with the back of a wrist. Lavellan continues to lie there, her knees helplessly spread, ankles together, flushed with pink color. They look at each other a moment.

One hand pries the rest of her clothes off her feet, the other caging her hip. Even when she struggles, the Huntsman keeps her still. “I’m still not opposed to knocking sense into you, lowlander.”

“That is not my title,” she bites. A part of her is reaching toward freedom in stubborn rebellion, enjoying the satisfaction of being continually denied it. 

The Huntsman only hums. They kiss again, joining wet lips and tongues, permitting breath in between. Lavellan snares her legs around his waist and pulls him down with all the force in her smaller frame, a grind of pure athletic strength—she does not have his size, but she has spirit and lithe muscle after years of combat. The Huntsman pins both of her wrists overhead with a single open hand. 

When she exhales, it has a vocal quality, light and airy and tremulous. She has not heard this sound from herself in a long time. The Huntsman slides two fingers into her cunt, knuckles buried deep enough she can feel the stretch. She’s no longer empty, although the friction and pressure is limited. The penetration keeps her trapped to the bed with her legs spread apart, head back and gazing skyward. The Huntsman is a heavy weight on top of her, but he doesn’t crush her. It is dominance more than oppression.

While he fingers her, his lips scatter a string of kisses across her throat down to her breast. He sucks on a single pale nipple hard enough to sting. His teeth edge the nub in a sparkle of pain, and Lavellan can feel the hard shape of his clothed cock against her thigh.

His upper body is mostly bare, however, which she takes full advantage. Her hands spend time mapping the plane of his back. As her eyes find the ceiling, her thoughts briefly wander on the verge of fantasy.

Everything in this moment is physical: the conquering and conquered. Lavellan respects this man but she does not feel anything in particular for him beyond that lust. She wants his cock inside of her, but she would not want him in her head. She’s shut herself to the nature of that vulnerability. 

Silently hunting for reprisal, at last she finds it—the Huntsman pulls his fingers out and hesitates in the space of one moment, and she surges against his bulk. Lavellan sends the hunter onto his back, locking her knees across the span of his arms and chest. Once she has him there, she presses her hand across his throat and lets the other drift down. A calculated tug frees his dick from the confines of trousers, so it juts up in rigid arousal, flushed dark red to the tip. 

And then, decisively, Lavellan straddles the Huntsman’s hips, steering his dick with one hand into herself. All of her weight settles in his lap. She squeezes her legs as a shudder works its way through her toes. He stuffs her to the very brim. For a moment, she is so perfectly full that hollowness dissipates and the chill is gone. Her skin is warmly burning. She rocks her weight in rhythmic thrusts, each time grinding their bellies, and when she feels the Huntsman move she shoves him back. Her nails bite into his skin. She can see the crescents forming.

Within minutes of those brutal motions, it ends. She wrings out the orgasm from him like a hungry animal, cunt squeezed around his cock, her abdomen tight like a drum. She doesn’t look at his face. Her pleasure is less necessary than making him come inside of her. Eyes closed, she sees nothing beyond the darkness of her own mind. She sees only black on the backs of eyelids. His hands are on her tits, and then her waist, and then they follow her legs to the delicate heels. 

In the gasping silence afterward, Lavellan opens her eyes. She is still where she was, straddled on this man’s cock. She is not in a dream, or another realm, a manifestation half-burnt or buried. She is at the end of the world and there is no one else.

 

Out by the cliffs, dawn is beginning to ascend. The colors are pink and tangerine and the air is bitterly cold. After a night of drunken revelry, the Stone-Bear Hold is peacefully silent. Only a few early risers are around; the rest are likely tucked into warm slumbering furs.

Lavellan’s body aches with a pleasant soreness. She has slept little in the hours of dark, and now rises to face the day. She had not stayed with the Huntsman long after. The intimacy of bodies under blankets is not a security she can afford.

Dressed for the weather, she moves toward the outcropping of the cliff. She will need to eat, clean herself, and find the rest of her companions before she moves on. They will have to begin the return journey to Skyhold soon.

Beneath the whistling winds off the coast, she hears a howl. 

Lavellan is startled from her thoughts. Adrenaline awakens every nerve, her body on alert as she pivots toward the noise. The howl comes again, low and distant, lonely sounding in the throat of a single beast. Her eyes search for any signs on the surrounding horizon but she finds nothing.

The howling goes on, although it appears to be traveling. Lavellan moves after it in frantic pursuit, leaving the Hold through one of the split pathways. Beyond it is the wide open land of the basin floor—seaside hut in one direction, hills and streams between, and finally the swamplands further out.

This time the howling is much closer. Lavellan runs, her boots muted in the dry grass, and then comes to a sudden paralyzed halt. At the very edge of the plain a lone wolf faces her. Its ears are pointed up, its muzzle slightly lowered to the ground, dark gaze uninterrupted as it watches her. The very wolf of her dreams.

 _Wait_ , she calls out, unable to vocalize the panic. _Wait. No._

The wolf turns, a slow lumbering gait, and vanishes into the darkness of the swamp. So she chases.


End file.
